Anglerfish

Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t the type of guy to get all freaked out around the opposite sex. I got along well with girls at school and dated and tried to scurry around the bases like any other guy in the throes of hormonal upheaval, but this was a woman. An older woman.

I realize that older is a relative term, so please don’t get the idea that she was some prune- eating blue hair with a walker. Had that been the case, I would have been aghast rather than unnerved. To me, anyone out of high school was older, and the fact that this one had left high school while I was still spitting up on my mother’s shoulder made her older still.

I usually didn’t notice older women. They operated on a different plane from mine and as a result scarcely registered to me in any significant way. I might look upon an older woman and appreciate her seasoned beauty and worldliness in an abstract way. I might at times envy her husband and hope that I might similarly luck out in the far distant future. So when this woman brought herself to my attention in the way she did, it disconcerted me.

The realization that something weird was going on with her came gradually. I was working as a lifeguard at the local outdoor pool. Lifeguards are trained to be observant, and what I observed was the beginnings of a pattern. My eyes would roam the pool and eventually stray to the water at the base of the chair and there she’d be, wading and occasionally smiling up at me. Not that a woman at the base of my chair was unusual nor was the smile in itself unwelcome, but the fact that this behavior repeated itself day after day struck me as a little curious. I preferred to think that it was a fear of drowning that explained her proximity to me, but it eventually dawned on me that the coquettish undertone of her smile might suggest something other than fear.

The pool manager led a little girl to my tots’ class.

“Steve, this is Carrie McGrath. She’ll be joining your class.”

“I kind of have my hands full with the kids I already have,” I said.

The manager gave me a curious smile. “Mrs. McGrath requested you specifically.”

I looked past the manager and spied the now-familiar form of my aquatic stalker. She gave me a little wave.

Thus began daily lessons with the little girl who made the older woman a mother to boot.

I would tow little Carrie around the pool. Blow bubbles, I’d instruct her, and she would dutifully blow bubbles the way kids do, their lips barely under the waterline.

More so than any of the other parents I’d dealt with, Mrs. McGrath seemed inordinately interested in her daughter’s bubble blowing prowess and would frequently stop me with compliments on my way with children, on how well they responded to me, on how gentle I was with them.

The other parents couldn’t have cared less how gentle I was, being happy to be rid of the buggers for half an hour.

On this day, Mrs. McGrath watched us from a poolside bench, alternately scanning a magazine and observing our progress.

With the lesson over, she bent over to pull her squealing daughter from the pool, giving me a lingering eyeful of cleavage in the process. For a split second, I could imagine burying my face in there.

“Thanks, Steve,” she said, shaking me from my reverie.

“Thank you.” It was all I could think to say.

She smiled and walked away. I noticed that her ass was as beguiling as her breasts.

*

It was one of those hot days in the early summer that bore the promise of heat waves to come. My skin soaked up the warmth. On a day like this, there was no better job and no better place to be.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spied Mrs. McGrath entering the crowded pool. From behind the mirrored sunglasses that were in vogue back then, I observed her approach while keeping my face studiously averted.

She waded to the front of my chair. “Hi, Steve.” she said.

“Hi, Mrs. McGrath.”

“Beautiful day,” she said.

“The best.”

She leaned back against the side of the pool and stretched her arms out on either side of her.

My perch gave me a good look down the front of her bathing suit. From the safety of my chair, I wasn’t above sneaking a peek. She wore a polka dot bikini, the kind I thought only existed in song. I tried not to be too obvious in my ogling — her breasts being justifiably part of my scan of the pool — but she caught me looking more than once. I was positively fascinated by the slight buoyancy of her breasts and the way the water would pool and eddy in the cleft between them. She would occasionally grin up at me. It was a grin at once friendly and, I thought, a little knowing and predatory.

She would later remind me of an anglerfish, dangling a delectable, tantalizing lure before me while I swam tentative circles around her, oblivious to the mouth that would happily gobble me up.

Her age notwithstanding, there was no denying Mrs. McGrath’s charms. She was a little taller than average and had a trim body. In fact, few women at the pool could wear a bikini to such advantage. She wore her black hair in a ponytail that she draped over her shoulder, more often than not tickling the top of the breast that I tried hard to avoid staring at. Full hips flared nicely out from a narrow waist, tapering into shapely legs.

Another lifeguard relieved me and I swung down off the chair to find myself facing the dripping Mrs. McGrath, wringing water from her hair. She flashed her teeth at me and I noticed a dimple on her cheek. I was a sucker for dimples even then.

“I’ll walk with you,” she said.

“Okay.”

“I love your tan,” she said, falling into step beside me.

This was in the days when a tan was a good thing, rather than a harbinger of melanoma.

“Occupational hazard,” I said, congratulating myself on the suave response.

“You must love this job. Sitting in the sun all day with lots of beautiful girls to look at.”

We walked and her hand brushed mine for a fleeting instant. “It has its moments,” I said, growing uncomfortable.

“The young ones must be a welcome antidote to old hags like me.”

She was far from being an old hag and she knew it. “What are you talking about? You’re really pretty,” I blurted, rising to the anglerfish lure like the most gullible guppy in the ocean.

“It’s sweet of you to say so. You wouldn’t know it from the way you look at me.”

“Are you kidding? It’s all I can do not to look at you.”

We’d reached the staff room and I stopped.

“Really?” she asked sweetly, with a guileless smile that weakened the knees and caused a stirring in other parts. She leaned against the wall and crossed her arms, pressing her breasts together, accentuating the cleft between them.

I nodded, clearly out of my element and not trusting myself to speak. Look at her eyes, I told myself. I noticed that they were hazel and flecked with gold and nearly as intoxicating as the geography that lay south.

“Well in that case, you’ve just made my day!”

I smiled and said that I was happy to have done so.

She leaned close to me, touching her bosom to my bare arm. It felt as though it was positively pancaked against me, though it probably wasn’t. I asked myself how she could not notice. Maybe she did notice and didn’t care. Maybe she was doing it on purpose. That was suddenly an alarming possibility.

Her spearmint breath blew hot in my ear. “Would you like to do more than look?”

I didn’t think that I’d heard right. “Uh.”

She looked suddenly abashed and backed away. “Think about it. By the way, you can call me Sharon.”

Then she was gone.

The notion that a grown woman might be interested in me, and that her interest was completely devoid of innocent intent, was utterly unfathomable to me. I thought it more likely that someone was setting me up for a practical joke and that Peter Funt might jump out at me and tell me that I was on Candid Camera.

Things like this just didn’t happen to me.

In the days that followed, I’d almost reconfigured the memory so that I now doubted that Sharon had ever approached me. In fact, of late, she scarcely ever occupied the space beneath my chair. I found, to my chagrin and confusion, that I missed her attention.

One day she approached me and asked whether I would mow her lawn. She seemed to have forgotten all about her proposition. I breathed a sigh of relief. There was nothing indecent or suggestive about her request, just a normal transaction between an older woman and a kid.

Her ex-husband, she explained, had lost all interest in the house she had wrested from him in the divorce, so she was on her own as far as maintenance was concerned. And that damned lawnmower was a beast to start.

I agreed, little knowing that an anglerfish had just deposited its lure firmly in my mouth.

*

She answered the door clad only in a long t-shirt. I could see that she wore nothing underneath by the way her nipples poked the fabric and how her every movement caused her breasts to sway and jiggle. The t-shirt bore the crest of Loyola College. I wondered what the Jesuits would think. The t-shirt barely made it to the tops of her thighs. Of course, I’d seen more of her at the pool, but somehow the sight of her that day made my mouth go dry.

“Hi Steve.” She stepped back from the door and seemed to register my surprise and surmise its cause. “Forgive me, but I just got out of the shower,” she said, fingering her damp hair. “I guess I lost track of time.”

She prattled on about how her daughter was with the father, of how she enjoyed the peace and quiet and a little time alone on the weekends.

I followed mutely behind as she led me through the house to show me the shed where the lawnmower was stored. I found myself mesmerized by the play of her barely covered butt as she padded barefoot to the back door.

I fumbled with the lawn mower for a while, cursing it, the sight of Sharon leaning against the back door making me distracted and clumsy. I whispered a prayer of thanks and gave Sharon a small wave when it finally sputtered to life.

It proved to be brutally hot. As I wheeled the roaring mower around the yard, I wondered at Sharon’s apparent wantonness. Did she always traipse around the house that way? Surely she could have gotten changed before my arrival. By the time I’d finished the front and back yards, sweat dripped off my nose and my shirt stuck to my back. I put the mower back in the shed and returned to the house.

“Can you do me?”

I stopped, surprised, thinking that I’d heard a question directed elsewhere. But no, the question was directed to me. Sharon lay on a lounger on a wooden deck that was bordered by tall cedars. The trees effectively screened the small area from the neighbors. On a small table, a glass of beer sweated in the heat.

“Excuse me?”

She smiled innocently. “I’m not as flexible as I once was.”

It was then that I noticed the bottle of tanning oil in her hand. I could feel myself flushing. “Sure,” I said.

Her bikini had less to it than the one she wore at the pool. Whatever it didn’t leave to the imagination I could easily fill in. With an easy motion she reached behind her back and untied the string of her top. I suddenly doubted her claim of inflexibility. She held the top to her chest and lay down.

It was a reasonable request, I thought. People were always slathering each other with oil at the pool. Perhaps I was just reading the subtext into it.

I knelt by her lounger and squirted the gooey liquid into my hands and rubbed them together.

I massaged the oil into her back. She purred contentedly as I worked from her shoulders to her lower back. She glistened and I confess that it wasn’t my love of coconut aroma that caused me to massage her long after her skin had absorbed the oil. She was warm and responsive and I found myself thrilling at the feel of her warm skin beneath my hands. I worked my hands tentatively up her sides, fingertips brushing the bulges of her near-naked breasts where they flattened against the recliner. Nervously, I returned to her back and traced the lines of muscles that lay on either side of her spine.

“You have strong hands.”

“I do?”

“Uh huh. Can you do the backs of my legs too?”

“Okay,” I said.

I worked up from the ankles, over the tight swell of her calves and on to the backs of her legs. The flats of my hands rose to the edges of her bikini bottoms, thumbs hooked around the insides of her thighs.

This can’t be happening, I thought as she purred her satisfaction.

I finally had to finish. Any more would have been indecent.

“You can grab us a couple of beers if you want. Or lemonade if you don’t drink.”

I couldn’t stand for fear of revealing the erection that tented my shorts. “Just a second,” I stammered, knowing that all the seconds in the world wouldn’t be enough.

She smiled and lowered her head to her forearms. “Whenever you’re ready.”

She closed her eyes and I risked a quick dash to the kitchen. I returned with the bottles. As she reached for hers, she rose just enough to expose a breast and its pink tip.

“Thanks,” she said, returning to her previous position.

I sat in the deck chair next to her and drank half of the bottle in one go to hide my agitation.

“Would you like to touch me?” she asked quietly.

My befuddlement must have been obvious.

“Come closer,” she whispered.

She grabbed my wrist and placed my hand palm up on her lounger. She lowered her breast onto it. My hand was trapped. After a moment of paralysis, I kneaded her softness experimentally.

A smile played on her lips. “That’s nice.”

A little while later, she turned to her side to give me more room. “Play with the nipple,” she whispered.

I did as she asked, alternating between pinching, strumming, and rolling it between my thumb and forefinger. It grew hard and puckered.

I must have gotten carried away because she winced and said, “Gently.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed her hand working down her side. With a quick movement, she untied her bikini bottoms. She spread her legs slightly and slid her hand between the thin fabric and her buttocks. She lifted the fabric away and flipped it between her legs, exposing the twin mounds of her ass and a vee of untanned skin.

My mouth was suddenly dry and my heart tripped in my chest. This was going places I wasn’t prepared for. I hastily removed my hand from her breast.

“I have to go,” I said.

“Do you have a date?” She pouted prettily.

“No…”

“That’s a shame,” she said. “Will you come again next week? For the lawn?”

“Yes,” I stammered, relieved to have been let off the hook. “Of course.”

On my way home, it dawned on me what I had done. I’d bailed on what could have been the single most exciting moment of my life. What a suck, I berated myself. What a sad excuse of a pussy. All the way home I cursed myself for my cowardice, and as the distance grew between myself and Sharon, I vowed that the next time would be different.

*

I didn’t see her at the pool for the next several days. During that time, my failure grew to epic proportions. I was the king of the eunuchs. I’d let a golden opportunity slip through my fingers. What young guy didn’t dream of an older woman to show him the ropes? It was the stuff of masturbatory fantasy. If I’d confessed my actions to my friends, they would have pummeled me for my cravenness and stupidity.

I breathed a sigh of relief when Sharon finally reappeared. She avoided the water when I sat in the chair, retreating to the deck whenever I took up my station. And on the deck, she chatted with a friend. As the day wore on, I realized that I would likely not get her alone.

As I ended my shift, I saw Sharon and her friend packing up their bags. I hurried to the deck and stood by her chair. My heart in my throat, I asked, “Do you need me to mow your lawn this week?”

Her brow furrowed. “I thought I might, but now I don’t know,” she said. Her disappointment in me was palpable.

I took a deep breath. “I promise to do a better job this time.”

Her eyes searched mine. At last, she nodded. “Okay.”

I had taken the step. There was no going back now.

*

I finished mowing the lawn and replaced the lawn mower in the shed. Sharon lay on her lounger, reading a book. Without looking up, she said, “Your money’s on the counter.”

I stood irresolutely at the foot of her chair. “I’m sorry I left last week.”

She lowered her book. “You do know how to bruise an ego, but I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable. It’s partly my fault.”

“You surprised me,” I said.

She studied me for a moment and I fidgeted under her scrutiny. “Would you be surprised now?”

“No. Not now.”

“If you could go back, would you react differently?”

I had imagined nothing but a different reaction for the past week. “Yes.”

She placed the book on the table beside her, apparently having come to a decision. She leaned forward and grasped her ankles. “Untie my top.”

I hastily complied and pulled on the string at the nape of her neck and the one in the middle of her back. The bows unwound and released, dangling down her back. She lay back, the top held in place by little more than the fullness of her breasts.

“Now the bottoms.”

My tongue worked in my mouth, trying to regenerate some of the saliva that had fled. I repeated the process on both hips.

“There’s lotion on the table,” she said.

I mutely grasped the bottle and flipped the top.

“This might work better if you removed the top.”

I took a deep, steadying breath. After my shame of the last week, I wasn’t about to flee this time. Besides, she looked tantalizing, tanned and lean and shapely. The perfect lure.

I placed a finger between her breasts and lifted the impossibly thin fabric clear. I noted with surprise that her breasts were tanned as well, indicating that they frequently saw the sun in this little oasis behind the cedars. Her small nipples sat atop each mound, puckered and tight. I’d heard of breasts described as proud. These, I noted, were of that ilk.

“And the bottoms.”

She raised her hips and I slid the bottoms free. Unlike her breasts, her pubic area revealed a tan line, a narrow triangle of pale skin that framed a delta of downy pubic hair. She drew one leg up and leaned toward me. She placed a cool, small hand on my cheek. “There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

It might not have been, but something else was.

I started at her shoulders and then moved to her arms, applying a sheen of fragrant coconut oil on her skin. I took a deep breath and moved on to her breasts. I ran my hands between them and then around the sides, returning to the top and then navigating their slope over and past her nipples. Her breasts glistened in the sunlight as the aroma of coconut enveloped us. I fondled her breasts, feeling their giving softness beneath my oil-slick fingers.

I’d never had the opportunity to explore a girl, let alone a woman, with such leisure and I took advantage of it. Her breasts felt wonderful beneath my slippery hands. Soft and full and yielding.

I reapplied oil to my hands and reluctantly left her breasts to anoint her sides and the soft well of her abdomen. The oil glistened on the fine hairs. At the lightness of my touch, she squirmed and giggled, a curiously girlish sound that did wonders to calm me.

I felt more comfortable now, so I sat at the foot of her lounger and perched one of her legs on my shoulder and then the other as I slathered tanning oil over their length, and finished by running my hand from her ankle up her inseam to just shy of where her legs ended.

With her legs done, I once again returned to her side and perched myself on the edge of her lounger.

“I think I forgot a part,” I mumbled, still not fully believing what was happening.

She smiled. “You’re right. It doesn’t see the sun often.”

I placed my hands on the soft flesh above the pelvic bone and traced the tan line to the middle until my fingers met at the hair that crowned her pussy. My experimentation with girls had given me a broad idea of the female anatomy and where all of the important bits were. Tentatively, I ran my fingers through the hair, up and over the pubic mound, and down to the soft folds of her pussy. My heart hammered in my chest. She lifted her legs and spread them slightly. Her labia cradled my finger and I slowly pressed until it disappeared within her moist hole.

I dipped my finger in and out and explored the warmth of her, marveling at the slickness within her and that it hadn’t taken me hours of wheedling and several beers to get to this point.

After some minutes, she grabbed my hand and positioned my finger at the apex of her vulva. “There,” she said, and took a deep, shuddering breath as I explored the area.

At length I coaxed a hard little pearl out of the surrounding tissue and played my fingers over it. This seemed to be where she wanted me to be. My broad idea of the female anatomy hadn’t included this remarkable spot, so I played with it experimentally, judging by her reaction what worked best. What oil I had on my fingers had vanished. I dipped my finger into the well of her pussy and marveled at the increased wetness there. I returned my finger to where it had been and rubbed and pressed the spot with renewed vigor. Her breath was coming in short gasps now and her back arched. She grasped my hand in both of hers and pressed it to her. She moved my hand quickly against herself. Her pelvis rubbed and quivered against my hand and soon she threw her head back and gave a muffled cry. Her body trembled and her proud breasts swayed.

“Oh, God,” she gasped.

I was a little alarmed and bemused by what I had awakened in her.

The tremors gradually subsided and she let go of my hand, allowing her arms to flop off the edges of the lounger. The finally opened her eyes and smiled. “That was nice,” she said.

Taken by the moment as I had been, I now looked upon the situation with fresh eyes. My fresh eyes couldn’t quite convince my brain of the reality of what they were seeing. A tanned and glistening woman — I couldn’t call her a goddess though I was now tempted to — completely revealed to me, grinning tiredly in what I took to be a post-orgasmic haze.

Her hand between my legs shook me out of my reveries. “It’s your turn,” she said.

I’d been so wrapped up in her that I’d almost forgotten the boner that I now realized strained painfully against the fabric of my shorts.

She swung her legs out of the lounger and stood. I couldn’t recall when I’d ever seen anything so beautiful. “Lie down,” she said.

I complied, my mind scrabbling through the possibilities. Would she, in the parlance of the day, make me a man? I imagined my cock within her and almost ruined the possibility right there.

She reached under me and removed my shorts. My cock sprang free and pointed to the sky. “Oh my,” she said, “Now I see what you’ve been hiding from me.”

I laughed self-consciously but said nothing, fearing that I’d only be capable of a helium squeak.

She perched herself between my legs at the foot of the lounger. Her fingers traced the insides of my thighs and then moved to my length. The feel of her hands on me threatened to be my undoing.

I averted my gaze, searching for something to distract me. I studied the eavestrough when she grasped me. I observed the clouds that passed overhead when I felt the warmth of… I had to look… the warmth of her mouth enveloping the head of my cock. Oh man.

A spider had constructed the perfect web in the cedar, I saw. A moist warmth descended over me and I could feel her tongue cradling the underside of my cock. Holy jumping…

Remarkable symmetry, I thought frantically, of the web. Where was the spider? I searched for it….

Her head bobbed up and down on my cock. Its saliva-wet length disappeared between her lips.

…but couldn’t find it. Where was that spider?

One hand cradled my balls and the thumb and forefinger of the other encircled the base of my shaft. Wet, sloppy noises came to me from my groin.

Was that it? The spider?

Despite my best efforts at distracting myself, my world shrank into that part of me that occupied the tight and warm confines of her mouth. I felt that familiar tingling and swelling. The building of pressure.

Fuck the spider.

I would have withdrawn, having heard that girls usually didn’t swallow, but Sharon had me pinned and there was nowhere to go.

Fuck it.

I must have groaned because Sharon’s pace increased.

If she wanted me out of there in time, she was going about it the wrong way.

She had me impossibly deep in her mouth, deeper than I would have thought possible, when I swelled and exploded. I could feel myself pulsing into her, long spasms that jetted my essence into her.

“Mmm,” she hummed as she lapped me up. She kept me in her mouth until I had softened, licking me clean.

“You’ve been saving yourself for me.”

“Yeah,” I said, grinning sheepishly.

She wiped her mouth and I sat up. I felt a breeze caressing my damp cock. She knelt by my head and kissed me. Our first kiss. Though I tasted myself on her, I didn’t mind.

“This has to be our secret, okay?”

“Okay.”

*

Lawn mowing because a euphemism for something else after that, if only to myself. It was suddenly one chore I eagerly embraced.

The weather forecast threatened to foil my lawn mowing plans but the day dawned sunny and clear. I loitered around the house until the appointed hour. I’m sure I broke a land-speed record on the way to Sharon’s house.

I wheeled my bike past her lemon yellow Beetle and around the back of the house, not wanting evidence of my visit to be too obvious from the front. I heard voices from the back yard and thought little of it, intent as I was on the promised ecstasies of today’s yard work. Rounding the corner, I spied the owners of those voices — Sharon, reclined on a blanket like an odalisque, albeit one in shorts and a tank top. And her daughter.

Carrie, the daughter, was the first to notice me. “Steve!” She cried as she leapt up, pigtails bouncing. “Are you here to visit me?”

Her giddy and innocent excitement displaced whatever disappointment I felt. “Of course,” I said. “And to mow the lawn.”

“That’s daddy’s job,” she said, scowling.

“You’re right. But the grass needs to be taken care of, don’t you think? Pretty soon it’ll be up over your head and we’ll never find you.”

Carrie laughed. “You’re silly.”

Sharon had gotten up and approached Carrie and me. Behind her daughter, she shrugged her shoulders and mouthed the word “Sorry”.

“I think we should let Steve get on with it,” said Sharon.

“Then can we play house? With Steve? And Tigger and Pooh?”

“I’d like that,” I said. “Playing house is what I do best.”

I hung around for a little while after mowing the lawn. I played with Carrie beneath a blanket spread over some chairs in the living room. I felt a little awkward, caught between the generations of McGraths, entertaining the younger while it was the older I longed to play with. Occasionally I would poke my head out and invite Sharon to play house with us but she demurred, saying with a wink that there was little room in the house for all three of us. At length I emerged from the makeshift house with a promise that I’d teach Carrie how to float like a starfish for her next swimming lesson.

Sharon walked me to my bike. “I have to apologize. Carrie’s father had to go out of town…”

“You don’t need to apologize. I had fun.”

A look of disbelief crossed her face and then disappeared when she saw that I was telling the truth. “You’re good with her.”

I was tempted to say that I would have preferred to have been good with her mother but stilled my tongue.

Sharon leaned against the wall and hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her shorts. “I should be free next weekend. If you still want to, that is,” said Sharon, not quite meeting my eye, as though unsure of herself.

I took my time with the lawn, savoring the anticipation of what awaited me in the house.

When I had finished, I entered the house and called Sharon’s name. Not hearing a response, I ventured up the stairs. Pictures of her family lined the wall of the stairwell. I felt like an interloper.

“Sharon?”

Her voice came from the master bedroom. “In here.”

I pushed open the door.

She wore a diaphanous red robe. Through the thin fabric, I could see the contours of her breasts and the tight circles of her nipples. A belt cinched her waist. The faintest shadow of hair crowned the apex of her trim legs.

Sharon looked at me and approached. She smiled nervously and rose to her toes, kissing me gently on the cheek. “You’re covered in grass. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

I wrapped my arms around her, the fabric of her robe cool and slippery beneath my hands. “Not just yet. I’ve been waiting two weeks for this.” I couldn’t believe the words coming out of my mouth.

I kissed her on the lips and allowed my hands to fall to the fullness of her ass. She fit into my arms perfectly.

Eventually, she took my hand and led me to the bathroom where she stripped off my sweaty clothes.

We showered together. The hot water cascaded over us, washing away the grass clippings and sweat.

She turned her back to me and I lathered the soap. I ran my hands down her back to the swell of her ass and then up again. I pressed my chest against her soap-slippery back and reached around, fondling her breasts and stroking down to the cleft between her legs.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked.

“Showering?” she asked with a hint of a smile.

“No. This. You and me.”

“Because I like the look of you.”

It wasn’t enough. My hands stopped.

She hesitated and then spoke again, turning in my hands to face me. “Approaching you was one of the most difficult things I’ve done.”

It was a revelation to me that someone as mature as Sharon could be assailed by doubt. I thought doubt was my department.

She took a deep breath. “I’d see you on the chair and I’d fantasize about you. You’re young, good looking, and I found myself imagining the possibilities. I’m well aware of my selfishness in seducing you. I’ve never done anything like this before, in case you’re wondering.”

She ran her forefinger down my chest. “Life is like a road with dozens of off-ramps. There are the ones you know you should take and the ones that you shouldn’t. Try as you might to take the right one, sometimes you’re compelled to take the others because it feels right. Dangerous and selfish, but right. And then you find yourself creating the conditions to take the wrong road, knowing that you’ll end up lost. Have you ever felt that way?”

I had no idea what she was talking about but nodded anyway.

“I found myself daydreaming of what it would be like with you. And then I found myself doing things that might make it happen, despite all the reasons why I shouldn’t be doing those things. And then it began to happen.” She shrugged.

“I’m glad it did,” I said. The water ran in sensuous rivulets down her body.

“Are you?” She laughed. “I’m sure you are, just as I’m sure that you won’t be later.” She must have read confusion and disappointment on my face. “It’s the most exciting thing, the game of seduction. But we fool ourselves into thinking that it’s nothing more than two people giving each other pleasure. Life is never that simple.”

We dried each other quickly and returned naked to the bedroom. She sat me on the edge of the bed and knelt between my legs.

As she had on her back deck, she took me into her mouth. Between my overheated anticipation and the time with her in the shower, I was more than primed.

“Stop,” I pleaded when her actions threatened to take me over the edge.

She redoubled her efforts and my thin self-control quickly evaporated. I surrendered to the sensations and spent myself in her mouth.

I cursed my lack of control. “I’m sorry,” I said as she rose from her knees. “I was hoping…” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

“You were hoping for the big prize?” Sharon laughed and lay on the bed. “You’ll have it. You’re young and I’m sure you’ll recover. In the meantime, I’d like you to do something for me.”

“What?”

“Whatever you want. Use your imagination. Do with me whatever you want.”

It was an invitation that I thought I’d never hear from anyone. I looked at her stretched out on the bed. This, I thought, was my new playground.

She gave my clumsy inexperience free rein, guiding my exploration of her body with sighs and purrs and the occasional not-so-hard or ooh-right-there. I worked down from her face to her breasts, exploring her with my fingers and lips and tongue and teeth. I licked from the cleft between her breasts to the soft and vulnerable well of her stomach. I nipped the insides of her thighs, eliciting squeals from above.

I circled her pussy, laving the area with my tongue. I pulled her velvet-soft labia into my mouth, marveling at the delicate feel of it on my tongue and between my lips. Taking a deep breath, I thrust my tongue into her and drew it up to where I knew she wanted me to be.

Sharon didn’t taste as I had expected. I’d heard a variety of stories from those more experienced than I — or those who merely had a cruder imagination. Her taste was nothing like that. I kind of liked it.

I soon felt her fingers twining in the damp tangle of my hair. The tip of my tongue explored the hood within which her clitoris hid, gradually coaxing it free. I recalled the lesson from a few weeks before and sought to replicate with my tongue what she had instructed me to do with my finger. Her pelvis soon bucked against my tongue with tremors that I doubted were conscious.

Her arousal inspired my own, and soon I was adjusting myself to accommodate my growing hardness.

A strangled moan and arching of her back signaled her release. She writhed on the bed, squeezing my head between her thighs. My tongue lapped furiously.

She finally released me with a long, satisfied sigh and gestured me to lie alongside her. “You’ve got a future in this.”

“Thanks.”

I lay next to her and felt older than my years, for it wasn’t the prospect of sex that filled my mind at that moment, but the simple and previously unknown pleasure of sharing the simple comfort of someone’s body. I hadn’t considered that the potential and the permission could be as profound as the act. Then her fingers walked slowly from my chest to my groin, where they wrapped gently around me. The noble thoughts fled. “I see that you’re ready for the main course,” she said. “This is your first time, isn’t it?”

I nodded reluctantly. “Not for lack of trying, believe me.”

“I’m honored. Then let’s make it memorable, shall we?”

She knocked me back on the bed and straddled my hips. For a moment, she sat there and I looked upon her and was struck mute by her very existence and that the fates would conspire so inexplicably to bring us together. I looked upon her and saw on her face an expression that I couldn’t decipher. I looked at her breasts and waist and the rest of it and was astounded again that this should be my playground. At length she lowered her chest to mine and her breasts flattened against my chest. The tip of my cock brushed the wet folds of her pussy. I wanted nothing more than to plunge into her. I raised my hips and she rose with me, escaping my thrust.

Sharon smiled and said, “I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I think I should lead, okay?”

I sulked for a moment, but then with the resilience of the young I figured that I was getting laid anyway, so what did it matter?

Her labia caressed the crown of my cock as her hips described slow, deliberate circles. She lowered her hips slightly and I entered her, feeling my head embraced. So this, I thought, was what it was all about.

She dipped onto me shallowly, repeated movements that drove me crazy with the urge to bury myself within her.

After several minutes of this most delicious torture, she sat up. “Watch,” she said.

I opened my eyes. She rose above me, backlit by the sunshine that streamed in through the window. Damp ringlets of hair cascaded around her shoulders. My eyes swept the fullness of her breasts and followed the curve of her side to the flare of her hips. Her hands rested on her thighs that were spread for me.

This had to be a dream. This couldn’t be me.

The tip of my cock nestled in the rippling folds of her sex. She leaned back, placing her hands on my ankles, and tilted her pelvis slightly to afford me a better view. I saw the crown of my cock cleaving her lips, spreading them. With a satisfied smile, she lowered herself slowly and I watched my cock disappear inexorably within her. Her warmth enveloped me by slow degrees as unseen muscles tightened around me, a wet embrace that descended my length until completely consumed.

It was an embrace more complete and intimate than I’d ever experienced.

“Don’t move,” I gasped. I wanted to commit these sensations to memory.

Her hands left my ankles and she sat upon me. Her fingers traced patterns on her breasts, fondling them. Her eyes closed and she rocked gently upon me. My cock explored the tight space within her. A smile played on her lips. “You feel so good,” she whispered.

I didn’t trust myself to speak.

After a few minutes she leaned toward me. Within the curtain of her damp hair, we kissed. Her tongue sought mine and she rode me with deliberate strokes. I raised my hips to meet her over and over. The pace soon quickened and our breathing came in gasps. Despite her preemptive blowjob, I quickly approached climax.

“Not yet,” she whispered into my ear.

She flipped onto her back and presented herself to me, legs spread and bent at the knees. “Come,” she said.

I positioned myself between her legs and she guided me in. “Slowly. We have time. We have nothing but time today.”

While I thrust my length into her, her eyes also took me in. There was hunger there, and a knowing satisfaction. I wonder how I looked to her, a young, inexperienced guy reveling in the unexpected warmth and intimacy she had to offer. Did she feel that she was giving or taking?

But these are the thoughts of an older man. At the time, I had no thoughts beyond prolonging the moment to save face and staying the pressure that was building within me. I remember the clumsiness of my thrusts, the feeling of her fingernails digging into the small of my back, the legs that spread wider, the gasps that mingled with my own, the arching of her back, the lips parting, the slim fingers clutching the sheets, and the final, emphatic thrusts that presaged blessed release.

*

I spent the rest of that summer between the pool, her lawn, and her legs. Under her tutelage, my confidence grew. She taught me the many ways in which a man can give a woman pleasure while giving me the same.

I kept my promise and did not reveal my secret, even to my closest friends. Not that I didn’t want to — I wasn’t averse to the envy of my peers — but I had an unreasoning fear that Sharon would simply disappear if I ever spoke of her to anyone else.

We continued to meet whenever the opportunity arose and gradually developed the routines and rituals of more conventional couples.

As the summer passed from July to August, I derived an intense satisfaction from seeing her at the pool, sharing secret looks and signals, knowing that I had possessed her. She still periodically occupied the space beneath my chair, driving me to distraction when she did, but more often than not preferred the company of the other mothers on the deck.

When I think about it now, I’m surprised at my willing delusion that this easy intimacy with a woman twice my age would continue indefinitely. As the summer drew to a close, I turned a blind eye to the signs of distance that grew between Sharon and me. Content with my worldly and voluptuous teacher, my single-minded pursuit of new lessons left little time or energy for reflection. In a word, I was selfish. In that alone I demonstrated the callowness of my years. Had I thought to ask about her thoughts, I might have been less surprised and would have spared her my adolescent rage when the relationship did come to an end.

Sharon was strangely subdued as she walked me to the door that last time. There had been a strange tenderness to our lovemaking that afternoon, a lingering slowness to her actions. Few words had been spoken. By that time, we needed few words.

She smiled, but it wasn’t that wickedly radiant smile that I’d grown to love. This was an older smile, a weary smile, one that I was too young to interpret correctly.

She grasped my arm as I turned to go.

“What?”

“We can’t meet any more.”

It took a moment for the words to register, and when they did I was gobsmacked. “Why?” I asked, a whine creeping into my voice as the significance of Sharon’s statement hit me.

“I’ve met someone.”

This was the end, I realized. An impossible season was drawing to a close, the curtain had fallen. She’d met someone, no doubt someone closer to her age. “Why does that have to change anything?” I asked.

She shook her head. “It’s not fair to him for me to carry on with you.”

“Who gives a crap about him? What about what’s fair to me?”

Sharon shook her head and bit her lip. “We both knew this wouldn’t last forever. It couldn’t.”

“You might have known,” I said accusingly. “You might have told me.”

“I’m sure you realized this yourself.” Her hand dropped from my arm. “It was great. Better than great. You’ll find that it’s rare that two individuals can act out their fantasies as freely as we have.”

I grew angry as I listened to her. Her worldliness grated on my nerves, especially now that she was playing the age and experience card.

“You’ll find someone eventually,” she continued. “Someone more your age. I know you can’t imagine it now, but I hope that you’ll eventually be able to remember me with something approaching affection.”

“But…”

“I’m sorry, Steve. But it has to be this way.”

“Go to hell,” I shrieked, slammed open the door and fled.

It wasn’t my finest moment, I admit.

She’d given me a whole lexicon of looks over that summer, but it was that last look — one of sorrow, shock, and pain — that haunted me for the rest of my life.

She didn’t return to the pool. I wanted to attribute her absence to the coolness of the coming autumn, but I knew it wasn’t the case. My anger with Sharon abated gradually, replaced by longing and shame. Finally, the pool closed for the season and school started again. As the weeks and months passed, I would ride by her house from time to time in the futile hope that she would see me and invite me in so that we could pick up where we’d left off. Of course, that never happened. Later I wished only for an opportunity to apologize for my terrible behavior.

I hadn’t passed her house for several months when an errand brought me to her neighborhood. A blue Galaxie 500 had replaced her yellow Beetle in the driveway and some new children played in the snow on her front lawn. I hadn’t known that she had put her house up for sale, let alone that she had moved.

I never did see her again.

I did eventually find love, or what passed for it at the time. Armed with the knowledge that Sharon had bestowed on me, I’m afraid that I acted like an insufferable prick. My girlfriend at the time was right: I only did want one thing.

Time mellowed me and I finally found my match, someone with whom I could share fantasies, just as Sharon had predicted. She was right in another thing too — I eventually did come to remember her with affection. Great affection, in fact.

To this day, the memory of the look on her face when I made my departure still causes a pang of guilt. I was a kid then, so what could you expect? As a man, though, I wish I could thank her.

###

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